Hearing devices but also individually adjustable headsets, headphones and suchlike are typically connected to a computer for adjustment purposes. Corresponding software then preferably allows the behavior and/or the characteristics of the hearing apparatus to be displayed in real-time. In this way, the hearing apparatus can be adjusted in a user-friendly manner.
By way of example, hearing devices have a plurality of adjustment options. These include not only the control elements on the hearing device itself, such as program switches, loudspeaker controllers and trimmers for modifying the transmission function, in particular with non-programmable hearing devices, but also the software algorithms on the ASIC of the hearing device signal processing. In addition, further adjustment options can be expected in the future.
Current solutions of virtually obtaining the status of the hearing device in real-time thus-consist in continually querying (polling) the hearing devices. The polling speed is however generally relatively low, i.e. the readout interval for recalling the status data from the hearing device is relatively long. The behavior and/or the status of the hearing device can thus only be displayed on the computer with a delay and furthermore jump effects can be observed whilst the data is updated.
In principle, it would be possible to avoid this disadvantage by increasing the polling speed. However, this is disadvantageous as regards the service life of the hearing device battery and the processor load on the hearing device.
Patent application DE 100 41 726 C 1 discloses an implantable hearing system with means to adjust the coupling quality. In this way, a telemetry facility is designed externally in order to receive operating programs from an external unit but also to transfer operating parameters between the implantable part of the system and the external unit. On the one hand, such parameters can thus be adjusted be a doctor, a hearing device acoustician or the wearer of the system him/herself, on the other hand the system can however also transmit parameters to the external unit, for instance to monitor the status of the system.